P-E

I was an 18 year old, away with friends camping in the summer of '75. About four days into the trip, we were bored of the night life in the area so we would read at night. One girl in the group had a book that she couldn't put down. The book was "The Rape of the A.P.E.". At first she read us exerpts from it, but in the end she read the entire book to us. At the end of the trip, each of us had purchased his or her own copy. In the ensuing years, I purchased, loaned out and lost 17 copies of this book. My father , a NYC policeman, lost 3 copies to coworkers. I now possess my only hard cover copy and wouldn't lend it to the Pope. It is a book about the American Sexual Revolution. Allen Sherman gives one man an elongated lifespan of 100,000 years to see where we went wrong. It is funny, educational and thought prevoking. I hope someone has the insight to put it back into print. I would be interesting to see how the author would interpet the disco scene of the seventies, AIDS , as well as things today.

I purchased this book when it first came out and have been touting its praises and sharing Allen Sherman's humor and knowledge of linquistics ever since. It is the best book ever and everyone should read this book at least once. Fool that I am, I loaned my hard back copy to someone and it was never returned. I hope they re-print this book, it is a classic!

While Allan Sherman's musical offerings are witty and fun, this book is one of the most amazing documents ever published. Like most of the other folks here, I first read it when I was young (16) and have bought and lost (as loaners) several copies. I found a hardcover in a used bookstore about ten years ago and will never let it leave my house now, as replacement copies are amazingly expensive and hard to come by.

I consider it the funniest book ever written, and this comes from someone who absolutely adores Twain, so take that as extremely high praise.

This is perhaps the most enjoyable of Plato's dialogues, and one of the most enduring.

Plato imagines his mentor Socrates, the comic playwright Aristophanes, and other Athenian luminaries of the Golden Age met for a dinner party and a night of discussion on the nature of love. The various guests present their positions in manners ranging from thoughtful to hilarious, but all of this is but an appetizer for the main course: Socrates' concept of Eros as the fuel for the soul's ascent to the Divine, as revealed in Socrates' reminiscence of his own mentor, Diotima, the woman of Mantinea. At the end, a drunken Alcibiades breaks in upon the festivities to reveal Socrates as an avatar of the very divine Eros which he praises.

Robin Waterfield's Oxford translation is one of the best. He captures each speaker's individual idiom, a major translational feat in itself. That he is able to do so and also render the text into lucid modern English is a further coup. The Oxford edition also includes an extensive introduction, very helpful notes, and a complete bibliography.

The Symposium is great philosophy, great literature, an intimate peek at the social life of one of western civilization's formative eras, a work of spiritual inspiration and transformation, and, not least, a wonderful read. Most highly recommended!

The symposium is Plato's famous dialogue on love. He brings together some of the greatest minds of Athens and together they debate the nature of Eros, the parentage of Love, and the Divine. Aristophanes, the comic, explains the human desire to unite with another using his favorite device: humor. Socrates, for whom Plato obviously has enormous admiration, gives us more pearls of wisdom, this time concerning love, beauty, and the ascent of man. Even the great general and statesman Alcibiades makes a cameo toward the end scene of the dinner-party.

At the very least, we learn about the Greek concept of Love. From this book we may garner a far deeper understanding of Eros than we might have previously hoped. This is the finest of Plato's works, in my opinion.

The Symposium will continue to tower among Western literature as a work of truly insightful genius. Buy this book and be prepared for enlightenment.

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Plato's "Symposium" is the story of Agathon's dinner party where conversation takes place with a small group of men, who recline, eat and drink around a table offering their views on Love. This story is an amazing account of how intelligent and yet so different a culture the men from ancient Greece were compared to our society today. Each speaker has this most amazing ability to tell two stories at the very same time, an creative artistic movement of what love 'is' in each and every story. applying and , metaphorically. intertwining a cultural, mythological story of the gods, giving far deeper meaning. In addition to this, the love relationships and sexual nature of these men also permeate an entire cultural feel to the story, enveloping a radical differentiation from our de-mystified and de-enchanted world back into a once existing world of substantial meaning and profundity.

Phaedrus, speaks first and relates how love is the greatest good, the beautiful, is shameful of ugly things and how only lovers are willing to die for one another.

The second speaker, Pausanias, applies two types of love, one Aphrodite, a common base love working at random with men's feelings, for money, for loving physical bodies, boys, men and women. The other type of love, from a much younger goddess, being a higher type, the heavenly, who only loves other men and boy love, but this is not physical body love but from affection of the mind of virtue and wisdom..

Aristophanes has the hiccups, so it is Eryximachus, a doctor, who speaks third, applying the idea of love as a double love; "for bodily health and disease are by common consent different things and unlike, and what is unlike desires and loves things unlike." p.82 The god of art was said to implant love as a healing art, all such love guided by this god. "It is quite illogical to say that a harmony is at variance with itself or is made up of notes still at variance." "So love as a whole has great and mighty power, or in a word, omnipotence ."

Aristophanes, the comic writer, gives a moving account of Love as a absolute human need, a desire for completion to the point of each person once shaped differently being cut in half, taking our current shape, in need of the other to complete the whole of what we once were. "For first there were three sexes, not two as at present, male and female, but also a third having both together," and they were violent, strong and forceful and would even attack the gods. So Zeus and the other gods held a meeting and decided to cut them in halves and make them weaker. From then on, they were sexually drawn to one another, both heterosexual and homosexual, reasons all due to the way of the cutting of the halves.Lesbianism and boy to man love is freely spoken of and justified according to this story of the gods. His moving speech on the beauty and virtue of love however, is according to Socrates, true only in the sense of romanticism and fictional idolatrous admiration of what love should be. For Socrates found such a romantic explanation of love as untrue to what love really is and what love contains, as it does not contain all the beauty and good.

The fourth speaker, Agathon gives a moving speech on the beauty and virtue of love however, it is according to Socrates, true only in the sense of romanticism and fictional idolatrous admiration of what love should be. "For all the gods are happy . . and love is the happiest of them all being the most beautiful and best . . the youngest of gods." In his speech, love is every good, virtuosos and beautiful thing.

The last speaker, Socrates, found such a romantic explanation of love to be untrue, for what desires good, virtue and wisdom is only something that does not contain such, something lacking, and therefore lacking it desires such things. Love only desires what it lacks. Love is neither beautiful nor ugly. "To have right opinion without being able to give reason is neither to understand nor is it ignorance. Right opinion is no doubt something between knowledge and ignorance."

It is so interesting how common and free sexuality and homosexuality were, how each man present commented on the beauty of the young men in their glory of youth. Alcibiades, jealous of Agathon, also a young beautiful male, makes a moving speech how Socrates refused his love and how other like young men, also were moved with his amazing wisdom and prose.

While women are generally discounted, and the bonding of affection in male love was considered a higher love by Pausanias, Socrates explanation of love, by far the most profound, was one he received from a woman named Diotima. Here, as another reviewer has stated, shows Plato's the egalitarianism and wisdom, like that of the beauty and ultimate goal of Love.

Later a group of men crash the party and the drinking really gets started. Some leave, while Socrates stays all night, never loosing integrity from his drinking and leaves with all his integrity.

Almost nothing can be said about the Thousand Nights and One Night, except what is obvious to anyone who understands its substance. It is one of the truly essential pieces of world culture, and probably the most extensive universe of stories in history.

Something must be said, however, for those who are NOT aware of the extent of this work. This is not the simple batch of a dozen or so stories -- Aladdin, Ali Baba, Sinbad, and the like -- that most people think it is. This is over 2400 pages of narrative, comprising close on 100 stories -- some of which are themselves as long as novels, and many of which contain smaller stories within themselves. The stories range from the profoundly epic to the delightfully whimsical, and there is variation in mood and length throughout the series that it not only serves as a collection of discrete stories but functions as a unified whole.

As such, the attempt to read the Thousand Nights and One Night in its entirety can not be a halfhearted one. The reader must be prepared to invest considerable time in the reading. The rewards, however, are incalculable. The complete experience has few parallels in fiction, because few works of such volume possess such unity. Reading moves from the hasty and immediate to the comfortable and regular. The difference is akin to that between listening to a 3-minute pop song and listening to a 30-minute symphony. The individual stories fade into memory, retaining their own identities but also falling into place within the whole.

I will not attempt to address the individual stories themselves in any detail. Suffice it to say that they narrate love, lust, sex, war, peace, contemplation, action, commerce, politics, art, science, and many other things, in the spheres of the supernatural and the mundane. The Thousand Nights and One Night is a virtually complete panorama of human existence, with each story a component scene.

I will, though, address the issue of translation. I have perused other editions of the tales in varying degrees (although this is the only one I have read completely). In the first place, any translation which omits some stories is not worth consideration. Although there is some controversy over whether Richard Burton (the first to translate the tales into English) corrupted the original text and inserted spurious parts, there is nothing to be gained by being persnickety in this regard. This edition contains more tales than most others I have seen, and therefore is more likely to contain the "right" tales somewhere inside. On a less abstract level, this text is simply more fun to read than most others, and, as mentioned, there is more of that fun text to be read.

Also, it can be plausibly speculated that this translation is particularly likely to have fewer Burton-induced inaccuracies, since it is not in fact a direct translation from Arabic to English. This 4-volume edition is a translation into English, by Powys Mathers, of a French translation, by J. C. Mardrus, of the original Arabic. It is somewhat surprising that an indirect translation such as this should be of such high quality, but I have found it to be so. In particular, this Mardrus & Mathers version includes substantial verse passages (which in other translations are often rendered as prose) and is refreshingly frank in its translation of the more ribald passages (which are numerous).

The Thousand Nights and One Night is not merely a book that can be read; it is a world which can be experienced, and the memories of that experience can mingle almost indistinguishably with memories of reality. Only a work of this size can work on large and small levels, with many intricate details but also many large thematic components. As an added benefit, by the time you have finished reading the fourth volume, your memories of the first will be fading, so you can begin a new reading immediately, and experience the joys of the Thousand Nights and One Night all over again.

The stories contained within are truly wonderful. They oftentimes read with such beauty and vividness that I almost believed I was there! If there's such a thing as a darn-near perfect translation, these books are it imho. Why not introduce your children to the tales of the Arabian nights via these books? I'm no historian, but these tales have a much more authentic feel than others that I encountered as a child. Read a few stories each night, and enjoy the whole series over a period of time! Or dive in and don't surface until you're done!

This is a complete English translation of the Thousand Nights and a Night. Before reading this, I started the Burton translation and never finished it. The language was very awkward, it seemed Burton purposely made it sound antiquated and in the passive voice. Instead of suiting the translation to the preconceptions Europeans had about both old and Eastern writings, Mardrus made a literal translation into French, and Mathers translated that into English. The result is not only a more acurate translation, but it's not the least bit awkward and is a joy to read. This is the only English translation of the book I recommend.

... Clarence Anderson's memoirs of the war ... fighter pilotswere normal guys with their own rivalries and an air of cluelessness that seems unusual for post-modern "Saving Private Ryan" perspectives but seemed fresh when I read it in 1991. Coming from the subject of "To Fly and Fight' it's still refreshing. Anderson was barely out of his teens when the war broke out and he joined the Army Air Force, precursor to the modern (and separate) USAF. Sent to England, Anderson was assigned to fly P-51 Mustangs, one of the most capable fighters, and witnessed the hopelessness of the allied daylight bombing strategy. After the war, Anderson flew flight test out of Edwards, breeding ground for the first generation of supersonic military aircraft, but spent most time at a desk. During Vietnam, Anderson rose to command a squadron fighter bombers flying out of Thailand. Through it all he comes off as something other than what I expected out of a fighter pilot - the sort of every guy that propaganda would have tried to create but never did. In WWII, Anderson saves the lives of bomber crews, enages in mortal combat with enemy fighters and sometimes makes the decision not to fir ... Anderson avoids the morbid fascination with the lives affected by combat - what happened to the bomber crews or wingmen that owed him his life, or the fighter pilots he may have killed.

Unlike Yeager, Anderson's tenure at flight test was not so glamorous. Instead of the sonic barrier, Anderson's experience included the "parasite-fighter", a fatally flawed idea for linking dimunitive fighters to larger motherships like the B-36 and typical of the "anything goes" atmosphere bred by cold-war demands and postwar prosperity. In that era, even General Curtis Le May knew the project was crazy, that it would never work, but that somebody would just have to try it anyway. When the tests result in tragedy, Anderson doesn't fail to include himself as deserving blame.

Anderson goes to command a Fighter Wing in Thailand flying missions nto Vietnam. Although Anderson gives the war litle treatment, he doesn't neglect his ignominous debut - barely in command when one of his new unit's F-105's makes an emergency, wheels-up landing.

Much of "Fly' is anecdotal, but the anecdotes are priceless, ...

Most aviator memoirs stress that the man in cockpit is just a normal guy, but Anderson makes it convincing. He is seldom judgemental, ... This will never be confused with "Baa Baa Blacksheep", the memoir of Marine ace Greg Boyingtin, ...

Although this book has a different feel to it than the book to which it will invariably be compared, namely Chuck Yeager's "YEAGER" autobiography, I must say it stands on its own feet without any apologies. In this book, Anderson details a life full of accomplishments and adventure.

The chapters that focus on his World War II exploits are clearly the most interesting, although his post-war adventures (including missions in Vietnam) were entertaining in their own right. My only complaint is that he did not write more about this period of his life. It seemed that Yeager's book was a bit more balanced in that he covered his career from beginning to end with an even hand. Anderson (or his publisher) chose not to do so, and that is unfortunate, for I am sure there is much to be learned from this period of his remarkable life.

Despite these minor shortcomings, this one is definitely worth a look. The beginning may be slow to some, but keep going. It is well worth it.

Col. Anderson's accounts of his flying in WWII and as a test pilot are truly memorable. While the writing style is course, it reflects his verbal recollections. I heard Col. Anderson speak at a Test Pilot School graduation; the way he told his stories and his dry humor are as much evident in the book as when he was on the stage. The room was full of test pilots and their families, and you could hear a pin drop. One of the very best books on a man and his love of flying, duty, honor, country, and his family. A must read!

This book is not a novel. It is an unusually constructed history in three volumes, written by a word-class writer. It is a heavy read. In this volume, Solzhenitsyn describes arrests, interrogations, tortures, trials, prisons, and methods of transporatation from the prisons to the labour camps. He gives a brief history of the genesis of Gulag, its principles and its expansion, in the chapter "A Brief History of Our Sewage Disposal System." Solzhenitysn marshalls an impressive range of facts and first hand anecdotes in addition to his own experiences, usually relating them in a straightforward manner, sometimes with bitter, vicious sarcasm, sometimes with passionate anger. The book is an astounding achievement, especially when one considers that he wrote it in sections, hiding each as it was completed; he was never able to refer back to what he had previously written, yet I noticed no repetitions. The book is an astounding achievement, immensely powerful, but very depressing, sometimes heart-breaking. Nonetheless, anyone who wishes to be well-informed in general, or about history in particular, must read it.

It is very interesting to compare The Gulag Archipelago, the true story of a horrible and real dystopia, with George Orwell's 1984, the story of an imaginary dystopia, or Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, another imaginary dystopia.

The difference between Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's book and the others is his more convincing, more concrete detail. Solzhenitsyn describes the gritty details of the arrests, tortures, kangaroo court trials and murders or imprisonments that the Communist Party of the Soviet Union inflicted on countless millions of people while Lenin or Stalin were in power. He gives exact details about the coarse criminality and ingenious cruelty of Communist prison officials whom he watched while he was in prison. He also weighed and sifted evidence that he gathered from other prisoners and he reports it here.

Solzhenitsyn entered prison a convinced Marxist. He gradually lost his Communist faith only after many years of physical and emotional abuse by other Marxists. The hope of a free lunch in a Communist paradise dies hard.

Review by Mike, Age 13

Solzhenitsyn does an excellent job of retelling the story of the atrocities of the Soviet Union. The Gulag Archipelago is a disturbing account of what happened inside the Gulag prisons. This is an account about the things hidden from the public and the things the Marxists wanted to keep hidden. And how he gave a first person account of prison life, well that was just amazing! His vivid descriptions about the kinds of arrests that took place I thought was very interesting and an amazing brainchild of a distorted Soviet Union!

How Stalin could turn an innocent gesture of two long lost friends being reunited into an arrest is beyond me. The Gulag Archipelago is an excellent book that unveiled an entirely new side of the Soviet Union and its perverted system of justice. It's a great book for historians and World War II buffs, or even if you are trying to find out more about the Soviet Union. The Gulag Archipelago is quite possibly one of the best books I've ever read! I would recommend it to anyone even remotely interested in the Soviet Union. (Content will be confusing for younger readers.)

Not as good as "Eat The Rich" or "Parliament of Whores" or "All The Trouble in the World" or "Holidays in Hell" or "Give War A Chance"; those books are thought-provoking as well as screamingly funny. This one is just screamingly funny, but this might actually be a plus for people whose response to some of P.J.'s better works is a defensive "That's not funny!"; P.J. has a tendancy to poke fun at EVERYTHING, including the sacred cows of people who he disagrees with (and sometimes those he agrees with.)

This book is absolutely hilarious! I'm a big fan of PJ's, so how did I miss this little gem until now? Anyway, this book had me literally LOL (Laughing Out Loud) as I read it in my own bachelor apartment. PJ has captured the essence of bachelordom, namely, we are all basically mischievous boys at heart who love chaos and disorder. PJ on cooking - "If you think of it as setting fire to things and making a mess, it's fun". His recipes alone will leave you in stitches. And he provides all sorts of ready excuses for putting off anything related to cleaning or keeping up one's residence. This especially rang true as I surveyed my own humble abode and thought "You know, I kinda LIKE having all that clutter on the floor, it makes the place looked lived in." This book is simply required reading for anyone who's experienced the joys of sharing an off campus apartment with two other complete slobs, where beer cans and empty pizza boxes are the primary forms of interior decoration. Let's just say it's a pleasant trip down memory lane for any healthy, red blooded American male, and should get 6 out of 5 stars if such a thing were possible!

The Bachelor Home Companion: A Practical Guide to Keeping House Like A Pig written by P.J. O'Rourke is a very funny, keep you in stiches book.

You'll never keep a house neat and tidy after you read this book. Of Course, that's assuming that you already do. What its like as a bachelor in theory as to actually being one is, according to O'Rourke, a great disparity. If you want to laugh and be entertained at the same time then this little tome is for you to enjoy.

Humor abounds and your life will definately take a turn... for better or worse will depend on you.According to O'Rourke... "How often does a house need to be cleaned, anyway? As a general rule, once every girlfriend. After that she can get to know the real you."

This book is not for people in the business of developing web sites for a living. The table of contents looks to be so promising with things like emotionally designed interface, etc. In the book, most concepts are not described well at all or they are described seemingly by someone who's just getting their feet wet in the biz. I hardly ever find a web book that I don't glean a couple interesting tidbits from but this is my first one.

It's great if you're getting your feet wet, not so great if they're already wet.

When I fist picked up this book, I thought it was another internet book. I was pleasantly surprised to find the book a rather gentle introduction into how the internet and the web fit into the bigger picture of customer satisfaction and that the web is simply another 'touch point' into the consumer market. I think that this book will help ground many dotcom startup types who have lost touch with the meaning of business and the importance of addressing customer needs. By following the recommendations in the text, anyone should be able to turn their ho-hum site into a knockout ecommerce site.

The web is a constantly evolving metaphor for electronic, people-less commerce. As the recent dot com bomb has illustrated, there's nothing magic about a web site. You have to treat customers like customers and provide a service. Customers don't care if you have trouble setting up a database or links between your phone lines and your ecommerce site. What they expect, they get -- or they go away, never to return. The Eternal Ecustomer does a masterful job at peeling through the layers of jargon and hype that cover the web and exposes the bare nerves of the business-customer relationship. After reading this book, you can't help but "get" why the latest downturn in web stocks was inevitable. IT also illustrates why the winners will be playing by the rules defined here.

I am a senior engineer for network security operations. My dad is an amateur radio operator, and my grandfather was as well. I read the 4th edition of "Now You're Talking!" to learn the basics of ham radio and prepare for the Technician license.

Over several weeks I carefully studied chapters 1-10, stopping to answer the questions in chapter 12 when directed. I used the book as a source to make a few notecards on operating frequencies and general electrical engineering principles. The day of the exam, I reviewed the questions in chapter 12 as a whole, and ensured I could answer each correctly.

Without a doubt, this book will prepare you for the Technician exam. If you analyze the questions asked on the exam, they are all fully covered in the text of chapters 1-10. Furthermore, the authors are master educators who present clear explanations for every concept. I found myself with a better understanding of many aspects of radio theory after reading this book, which is more important than simply passing a test!

The only aspect of the book which confused me was the discussion of Technician privileges on page 1-11. The text states "As a Technician, you can use a wide range of frequency bands -- all amateur bands above 30 MHz, in fact." On the same page, Table 1-1 shows Technician licenses provide "All amateur privileges above 50.0 MHz." Table 1-2 on the next page states "Operators with Technician class licenses and above may operate on all bands above 50 MHz." Which is correct, 30 MHz or 50 MHz?

Regardless, I give the 4th edition of "Now You're Talking!" my highest recommendation. At $19 it's a bargain, and it was my sole reference. I earned a perfect score this morning after studying this book, and I look forward to joining the amateur radio community on the air.

This book is exactly right for someone who wants to become a ham radio operator. This book does two things. It is a self study course that will allow you to pass the Technician level FCC test. It is also a general introduction to all of ham radio, covering the highlights of all that can be done in amateur radio. It has just the right level of sophistication to give a good understanding of all facets of amateur radio but does not get into such extreme detail that it is overwhelming. The technical level is just right as well.

I used an earlier version of this text to study for my amateur radio license (KD4TTC). Even though I studied for the Technician license I was able to pass the written portion of the test for the General license class. However, to get to know Morse code, needed for working the frequencies that will get around the whole globe, you will need to find a way to practice receiving Morse code. While this book won't teach you Morse, you will learn from the book how to go about learning it if you want to. (As an aside, I was not interested in international communications back then, so I skipped that aspect of the hobby. I will be learning Morse this year and will upgrade. There is plenty to do with amateur radio without Morse code, so don't let any disinterest or fear of Morse stop you from becomming a Ham. The book explains all this).

I have not yet come across any aspect of ham radio that was not described at least in overview in this book. I may not know details of lots of aspects of all that is ham radio, but I have not come across anything in Ham radio that I was not introduced to in this book.

You can expect that after reading this book you will be able to pass the Technician license exam, you might even be able to pass the General license written portion, you will have learned how to learn Morse, you will be able to decide what equipment you will need and where to find it, you will be able to set up your station and safely operate it, you will know correct and responsible operating procedures, and you will learn about all the different types of communications you can do so you will pick the most enjoyable aspects of the hobby for yourself.

I have given this book to friends so they can become hams. It works well for that purpose. I came here to buy a copy for yet another potential ham and found myself writing this long review. I am not really that avid of an amateur operator, but I am really enthusiastic about this book because it was such a fun and painless way to learn what I needed to know to get into ham radio.

Buy the book.

My wife and I both used this book to study for the Technician class exam... and we both passed. My wife is not particularly technically oriented, and was able to grasp the topics presented in the book without any trouble. If you are interested in joining the ham radio ranks to communicate with people around the world, to experiment with radio equipment, or just to chat with local hams, this book will get you started. It explains all the questions in the Technician question pool, and contains a list of all the questions you need to know as well as the answers. Everything you need to know to get started is inside.

I first encountered this extraordinary history back in the early '70s as a medieval student and then again some years ago beyond study and therefore with considerably more money-at least compared to a student-and I was able to purchase this wonderful set.

I freely admit not having read the three volumes cover to cover but have parachuted in to various topics within the span of information covered by the set and I can attest to the brilliance of Runciman's writing. He represents the best of historical writing in that he is the undoubted master of his sources and their subject matter but he can also convey the extraordinary complexity of these centuries in a writing style that is at once understandable and also colourful. To my mind he is the best of the best because, as undoubted master of his subject, he is also able to tease out and convey the human interest, the drama and the wrenching saddness of all that was the Crusades.

Steven Runciman has transcended history as few other historians of any time have been able to do. He has imbued the structure of history with the richness of a night at the opera or theatre-the reader is presented with the panoply of humanness at every turn and I believe this is the true mark of a master's hand.

This book, often published as three volumes is the definitive history of the crusades. It is at once a tremendously entertaining and gripping story, and an academically accurate account that stimulates one to further enquiry. His account is so alive it is as if one was reading events unfolding in a newspaper day by day and the destruction of Constantinople was only yesterday.

Runciman tells the story of the West's response to the fall of Jerusalem to the Arabs, and their unexpected success in reconquering it. Throughout the story the Christian west, the Byzantine Empire, and the Arab world are painted with all their good and bad points.

No one comes out of this story without fault, but Runciman points out that there was a tremendous invigoration of western civilization through its contact with the Byzantine and Arab world. The short lived Kingdom of Jerusalem became in a way an experiment in East-West civilization that ultimately was destroyed by the arrival of later crusaders whose enthusiasm for attacking the Arabs (with whom the earlier crusaders had learned to live in relative peace) was not matched by their numbers or competence. Runciman notes that Arab distrust of the West had its roots in this time.

A great introduction to Byzantine, Arabic, or Latin history. See also the work of JJ Norwich on Byzantium and the Normans in Sicily

This second volume of Steven Runciman's three-volume history of the crusades is a masterful piece of scholarship and historiography. If all historians read Runciman's History of the Crusades and learned of his style, there would be fewer complaints from readers that histories are dry, crusty stories.

Indeed, Runciman artfully weaves several elements such as the rise and fall of the Kingdom of Jerusalem, the zenith of Byzantium and the ascension of the Turkish power in the persons of Zenghi, Nur ed-din and Saladin powerful, gripping narrative that brings the rogues and heroes of the crusades to life. Runciman skillfully explains the court intrigues behind the scenes in the crusader kingdom and fiefdoms, the delicate balance of power between Byzantium and the Frankish east and the Turks and the rivalry between Turkish clans and leaders.

This second novel concerns the rise and fall of the Kingdom of Jerusalem, its place in the three-volume set is critical in that Runciman articulates a few of his his theories concerning the lessons learned from the crusades, and they are difficult to refute. Runciman of particular relevance to contemporary foreign policy in that region, Runciman notices that the politically fractious Turks discovered a unifying force in the presence of the alien Franks, which became a focal point in the development of a pan-Turkish/Muslin identity and a nexus for action. Also, Runciman argues that first-generation crusaders acclimated to local political and cultural customs and could have co-existed to some degree with the Turks and Muslims had it not been for the brash crusaders that arrived after the establishment of the Kingdom of Jerusalem and viewed the situation in more stark, black-and-white terms. Runciman also holds that the Latins could have made more effective use of Byzantium in formulating policy for the east rather than competing with it in some instances and altogether ignoring it in others. Finally, while Runciman assumes that the triumph of Islam in the crusades was an inevitability (mostly due to the policies chosen by the petty nobles that arrived in the east after the first crusade to aggrandize rather than consolidate crusader power) there were shrewd, far-sighted individuals and more of these distinguished men could have stemmed the tide a bit longer. In other words, qualities such as leadership and "the vision thing" are timeless.

According to the introductory note in the Dover Thrift Edition, "Medea," the play by Euripedes, was first produced in 431 BC. After more than two millennia, this remains a powerfully written human tragedy. The Dover Thrift edition features an English translation by Rex Warner; this very effective translation manages to sound both classic and contemporary at the same time.

"Medea" tells a story involving the classical Greek hero Jason and Medea, by whom he has fathered two children. As the play opens, Jason has angered Medea by taking on another woman to be his wife. This conflict drives the drama forward. "Medea" is a gripping story about love, parenthood, politics, betrayal, anger, and revenge. There is a subtle but fascinating theme of ethnic tension as Medea and Jason clash. Finally, I believe that, after all these centuries, Euripedes' sociological and psychological insights remain compelling.

"Medea" is a classical work that many have heard of, but few have actually read. It is the story of the wife of Jason, leader of Argonauts, and her chilling plot of revenge against an unfaithful husband and his new child-bride. The play is short, concise, and powerfully unnerving. Whether this is a history of misogyny or a warning of the vengeance of a wronged woman is a matter better left to scholarly debate. Provocative, disturbing, and at times heartbreaking, this is a definite must-read for neo-Classicists and avid readers alike. Not to be missed.

Euripides play "Medea" is a timeless reminder that certain human characteristics are universal in nature. Medea's readers will notice that, even despite they live 2,000 years after this play was written, the same types of disputes between individuals occur. Men still cheat on women, and women, just as then, had strong emotional displeasure with such behavior. What Euripides could never imagine is that this is an excellent story about evolutionary psychology. This story does not justify such behavior, and, in fact, shows that the consequences can be deadly.

We see today that the story of Medea is on every single day in our living rooms! Yes--every soap opera is about women who have been hurt by a man, while that man, because of biological instincts that encourage him to look for a variety of women--will search near and far for another female who will accept him. What most stories do not explain, however (and especially not in that time era) is that women do feel immense pain from this, mostly emotional. Medea was able to use that emotional anger she had -- and use it to cause physical and emotional pain on her philandering husband. The only question is, did she need to kill her children to make that point? That remains to be seen.

Michael Gordon